Looking Ahead to Challenges in 2010
December 26th, 2009
DURANT, Okla. – As the curtain begins to fall on 2009, it is time to begin focusing on the New Year. Clearly, 2010 will be a year with many challenges for our state.
Despite those challenges, I do believe there will be opportunities to improve the quality of life for the people of Oklahoma. Even so, the first hurdle must be balancing the current fiscal year budget and finding a way to ensure critical services are not decimated by declining revenues.
We in the Legislature will have to prioritize what state government does; protecting funding for those functions most critical to the quality of life we enjoy must be at the top of the list. For me, that means protecting our children and the public education on which they depend.
Failure to ensure public schools have the resources they need to teach our children may be “penny wise” for the current year’s budget. The real cost in reduced opportunity for children would, however, lead to serious ramifications in the future, with both large scale consequences and more personal impacts.
The most serious large scale consequence would be a reduced ability for Oklahoma to crawl out of the national economic downturn. When businesses and industries look for places to expand operations or relocate plants, among their top criteria is a quality public education system. That is a fact for two reasons.
The first reason is a large scale consequence. A quality education system ensures businesses will have a well-educated pool of potential employees from which to draw.
The second, more personal reason for executives is that whenever a business expands or relocates, those who move to the new area will have their children in those same public schools. Not a single executive for any business or industry wants to move to a place with an education system in which policy makers have not made significant investments.
The more personal impact of a financially devastated educational system for Oklahomans – and the one we must avoid – is that reduced revenue could lead to reduced learning opportunities for our children. In the long term, that could mean Oklahoma’s children might not have the ability to reach their God-given potential.
A quality public education system is the foundation on which is built everything else we hope to achieve as a state. Job creation, public safety, a strong economy and a brighter future all hinge on what decisions we make about funding our schools.
The challenge is greater with a billion dollars less to spend on all of state government and revenue reductions for next fiscal year with which we must contend. Still, as we approach the 2010 legislative session, we would be wise to remember the words of President Kennedy who said, “Liberty without learning is always in peril, and learning without liberty is always in vain.”
Thanks again for reading this week’s “Senate Minute.” Have a Happy New Year, and may God bless you all.